Dive Brief:
- Inovues has entered into a strategic partnership with clean technology firm QEA Tech in a deal that the companies said will provide building owners a new suite of “turnkey energy efficiency services.”
- Both climate tech firms said the partnership will incorporate building envelope imaging analysis and energy modeling to evaluate conditions in existing facades and recommend actionable steps to retrofit buildings.
- QEA and Inovues said that New York City alone can cut nearly 20 million metric tons of emissions a year by upfitting building facades.
Dive Insight:
With tight budgets, facilities managers are looking to find ways to cut costs. Data from the U.S. Department of Energy and the U.S. Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy suggests that 23% of projected energy savings will come from windows and building envelopes, equaling more than $13 billion in annual energy savings.
The deal between Houston-based Inovues and QEA Tech looks to capitalize on those potential savings.
Inovues develops energy retrofits for facades and windows, with its retrofit technology installed over the existing glass system, which helps upgrade its insulating performance by up to 10 times without disrupting the day-to-day operations of the building and its occupants. The company says its analysis of select buildings and modeled solutions have saved building owners up to 40% in energy consumption and slashed greenhouse gas emissions by as much as 30%.
“By reusing the existing glazing as part of the solution, we are using 70% less material than replacement and lowering the retrofit costs for building owners,” Inovues founder and CEO Anas Al Kassas told Facilities Dive in an email.
QEA Tech cited an objective to help building owners recover up to 51% of the energy loss that occurs through building envelopes. The company uses proprietary AI-powered software and drones equipped with infrared cameras to conduct a comprehensive building envelope analysis, quantify energy losses, and calculate related greenhouse gas emissions. It then provides retrofit recommendations to optimize energy efficiency.
“Traditional methods to evaluate the building envelope’s performance, such as blower door tests, are significantly more expensive and often not feasible especially for larger buildings,” QEA Tech CEO Peyvand Melati said in an email interview.
The price of QEA Tech’s building envelope energy audits can range from approximately $3,000 for smaller buildings to potentially over $100,000 for large projects such as airports or large shopping centers, he added.
Inovues’ Al Kassas noted that up to 40% of a building’s energy loss is due to inefficient windows, and approximately 70% of existing buildings have inefficient single or double-glazed windows and facades.
“In U.S. commercial buildings alone, this translates to massive financial losses, equalling over $13 billion annually. However, without a thorough analysis of the performance of the building envelope, these financial losses are often invisible to the building owner. This is where QEA Tech’s speedy AI-powered envelope assessment meets Inovues’ ability to upcycle inefficient glazing in place, at 10% to 25% of the cost of traditional window or facade replacement,'' Al Kassas said.
He added that Inovues’ growth plans involve raising additional financing to see projects on the pipeline through to fruition and expand into new verticals.
